Zombie
by PlaidButterfly
Summary: Ahsoka Tano reacts to Anakin becoming Darth Vader, and plans to save him even as she knows she will die. One-shot.


Of course Ahsoka remembered Bredon.

The planet was lucky to be remembered by anyone these days, but it used to be important, at least somewhat - a small merchant moon connecting the Outer Rim with the rest of civilization, not as important as other ports, but there nonetheless. All Ahsoka had been told about it was that it was that, technically, the Republic still held the planet, though it was far from a victory.

She had also been told that they were going there with reinforcements to help with the aftermath of battle. Nobody gave her a straight answer about the crates they were carrying, but she was able to find the right file to read - liquor, because the Republic had declared that proper counseling was not cost-effective for the clone troops there. She scoffed a bit, thought that it couldn't possibly be that bad, and then immediately started trying to figure out how to sneak a sip, because alcohol was new and interesting. When they landed she was confident she could harass Rex and pull rank until he caved in and gave her at least a sip.

"Stay on the ship until we're done," Anakin had commanded tersely, but of course that was an order Ahsoka couldn't obey. She waited until things were relatively quiet, and, sticking close to the ship, she snuck out to see.

It was not a city or even really a battlefield anymore as much as it was the site of a massacre. The acrid smoke still hung in the air, and it stung in her throat - she would hate every anti-radiation protective pill she had to swallow for the weeks after, she remembered - and there were still small fires burning, bright spots in the black rubble.

She learned later that the droid army had been like a petulant toddler, and if they couldn't have Bredon, then nobody could. There were no recovery tents, and no supply crates (though the troopers had already broken into the large supply of liquor); in fact, it didn't seem like a rescue mission at all, because the clone troops were gathered around talking to themselves. Only Anakin was actually out among the rubble, his unlit lightsaber in his hand, his robes caught in the wind just like the ribbons of smoke on the horizon.

It took her a moment to trace where he was looking, and she put a hand over her mouth to muffle her surprised squeak. There was a face, a hand, a torso - the skin stripped away from the flesh (and what little remained was covered in boils, clear and sudden from the burn) - eyes no longer behind eyelids and teeth without lips. The fingers twitched, and she saw her master jump, recoiling a little.

"Please..." It was an earnest but unspecified plea, and she didn't hear it as much as she read how his tongue curled. Anakin seemed to take a moment to consider, a mingled expression of horror and pity crossing his face before he clenched his jaw as if realizing what the wretched remains of a man wanted. As the lightsaber blade slid out with a steady thrum, the victim of the battle gave a happy sob. "Thank you, thank you!" His lipless mouth grimaced into a broken smile as Anakin brought the blade just to his neck and then pulled it back with an executioner's grace, aiming to make the cut true and quick.

He didn't see it, but she had stared, mesmerized, at the whole affair. She knew he would not have wanted to let anyone see how he turned his head to look away from the coup de grace as if it were too much even for him.

And there were more, and more, to the point where the clones began to help, lifting rubble to find the souls that were already lost to offer them swift deaths instead of long and painful ones. Every so-called survivor accepted the offer, whether it came in a lightsaber's stroke, a blaster shot or a shot of the small, clear, painless poison they had been issued alongside the liquor. By the end of the day Ahsoka had stopped pretending to still be on the ship, and Rex willingly handed the bottle of cheap liquor over to her when he saw her out on the battlefield. It was a cheap panacea the clones were willing to share, snake oil to dilute the memories.

When night finally came and they retreated back into the ship, she avoided looking Anakin in the eye, waiting for the lecture that she was sure would come. Ahsoka avoided him until it was almost time to turn in for the night, and in the dim shadow it was impossible to keep all the events of the day from bubbling up again.

There was no lecture. He just saw the look on her face and extended an arm as they sat side-by-side, and she accepted the invitation, leaning over to rest her head on his shoulder as she lapsed into open sobbing. Stern talks about how she should have obeyed orders and how she should not be so affected by it would come later. In the meantime there was the comforting warm weight of his hand around her shoulders, and she pulled her closer as she continued to sob. There was a quiet rediscovery of the horrors of war, brutal and bloody, which was something she had forgotten when it was one victory after another against a mechanical enemy that could only spark instead of shriek in human agony.

Of course Ahsoka remembered Bredon, even when she wanted to forget.

--

Now she was back on Bredon, and it still smelled the same - the charred ash hadn't settled out of the air even though it had been years. She was counting on being followed and so her trail was messy and loose, but even then she wasn't sure he would come. The pointed joking between Master and Padawan remained, but in a more vicious form. The spirit behind it was still there, even if malicious and twisted. She knew he planned to send those stormtroopers in at three in the morning to stop her snoring, replacing an annoyed poke. And she had left him little notes and mementos to taunt him back, making a dummy of a sleeping body with red paint and fluffy pillows so that each blaster shot brought him a fluff of feathers instead of blood.

Ahsoka was starting to wonder how many times she had slipped away of her own power, and how many times he had let her go just so they could continue the chase.

It had been three weeks on Bredon and already, without the drugs meant to counter the lingering radiation and poison, her hands were starting to blister. It didn't matter. Her trap was so finely constructed already, and she was proud of it. The desperate struggle to escape had brought out the worst in her, and nurtured it - perhaps that was why he pressed, then drew back, then pressed again, waiting for her to become just as vicious as he was, drawing out each evil humor? She didn't even care anymore, just as long as she kept breathing. If fear and hate meant she was alive, she would accept them.

So she planned, patient, waiting, trying to catch the hunter and pull him into his own game while simultaneously, fundamentally unsure that she was not being played in just the same way.

--

After rereading an article, Ahsoka's dreams had shifted. She dreamed every night, on rote, the same pattern again and again.

They had started the first time she saw a new holovid of him, trapped in the black armor, the steady wheezing audible in the background even as the Emperor delivered a speech about how all was well. There was a special horror in it for her, sympathetic to him when no others were.

It was a certain sound, distinct. In her dreams it had gotten mingled in with another memory: it had originally been a day for the older jedi trainees, unassigned padawans, to shadow a jedi as he went around the city with regular patrol. But they stumbled across an investigation into an unauthorized, illegal racing ring of Correlian slicer hounds.

That was when Ahsoka, along with the rest, was introduced to the uncomfortable concept of euthanasia.

The stables were miserable wrecks of filth, and all of the slicer hounds were dead or dying. She didn't remember the speech of the jedi they were following gave, but she did remember the look in each animal's eyes. One wagged as she passed, laying on its side, gasping hard and wheezing. Instinct told it to fight on, but the look it gave her was a silent plea for Ahsoka to do what it could not. They learned that day the mercy of a blaster shot between the eyes.

It was the same dying gasp that her dreams assigned to her Master - Vader, now, trapped in that suit of armor. She couldn't see his eyes but she knew them behind the mask. Each wheeze was a cry for help. He had been made to run the course so many times that he could not any more; they whipped him and beat him into another battle where he could be the Republic's golden child and poster boy. He had run and run until he could not take it any more, it was so easy for her to see, victimized by well-meaning souls who did not take into account that every battle seen wounds just as surely as any blaster bolt. She saw him the same as the slicer hound that had run too hard to make first place, shattering the tender and delicate bones in its leg from too much pressure, at the finish line, down, writhing, calling out in yodeling howls of agony as it gasped, nobody stepping up to take responsibility.

Sometimes it was with the same clear poison, injecting it at a weak spot in the armor into the flesh underneath it. Sometimes it was with a blaster shot, or her lightsaber - both the same way, the tip of the gun and the top of her lightsaber hilt pressed against his chest gently, then a squeeze of the trigger or a twitch of a finger to produce the blade. He never said anything, just laid his head on her shoulder and let her hold his hand until the mechanical wheezing ended in a clattery death-rattle and a contented sigh.

Ahsoka would awake elated every time, beamingly joyous.

But now the dreams were different.

She had been required to study anthropology, as a jedi-in-training, to emphasize how different cultures sometimes were. It pointed out how very few common characteristics there were: family, nakedness, and... the undead. She had laughed at the last item on the list, and continued giggling as she looked up Togruta tales about such things. It was outlandish and absurd.

But now she was waiting for one of the undead to come into her trap.

The dreams now started off the same, it was true - the same dying, painful gasps as he stood there, looking so sad despite the impressive armor. Ahsoka took his hand, murmuring gently about how she would help, caressing the gauntleted palm like she was about to remove the thorn from it that had been aggravating it. He was too tired to speak, but she understood how heavy his heart was and did not press it. _Let me help you, Anakin. Let me help you,_ was her soothing mantra as she led him over.

She wanted to look into his eyes, every single time, a mistake she made again and again. The helm was easier to get off than she expected, and he waited patiently.

And Anakin was underneath, yes - but an Anakin that had been dead for weeks, flesh ashen and rotting, gaze distant and unfocused and the maggots bursting on his cheek like the white flowerpetals tossed over Senator Amidala before the casket was closed. But his hands would twitch and he would grab for her tenderly, dead and not-dead, unnatural. She had come too late.

Ahsoka always woke up screaming.

--

He was here, finally, and she threw her mind into her task wholeheartedly. It was a Sith technique but she did not realize it, independently discovering what the dark side of the force had led her to. It was easy enough to press images onto someone's mind. She considered it success, even if she suspected he was letting her in just to humor her and see what she could do.

She started out with the ghostly images of the dead troopers they had known, ghostly casualties of other battles walking Bredon's wreckage. Ahsoka made sure to push with the force to flutter his cloak to accompany how a hand reached up to grab it. It frustrated her that he seemed more impressed than frightened, but he continued opening his mind to her to let her do such things.

So Ahsoka tried harder, meditating in deep thought among the wreckage. Images of the victims floated back up out of the rubble to howl at him, the dead rising again in image with fleshless faces and gaping mouths. A slight pause, but he seemed to shrug it off. Her frustration quickly soured into anger, and it was a new source of strength as she clawed around in memory, desperate for an image that would have the desired affect.

She found it.

Graceful as always, the image stretched out her arms. There was blood at the side of her mouth and her wide eyes, framed by perfect dark lashes, were unfocused and dimmed by death. The crimson stain spilled out over her ornate dress, and her hair had half come down from the elaborate updo. It took Ahsoka a moment to recall the distinct tremble, throwing her memories back to the blue shadow virus incident, recreating it.

"Please, General Skywalker." The ghostly image of Padme reached out with trembling, delicate fingers. "Help me."

He was so close she could hear, now, how he drew himself up, those feet planting more firmly on the gravel. And abruptly he swatted her out of his mind so hard she gave a startled cry, reeling as if she had been punched, instinctively covering her head with her hands. The gasping, dying wheezes were right by her, now, drowning out everything but the subtle growl of a lightsaber blade. It was right by her ear, and slowly, she let her hands drop as it came closer, testing, finding where its mark with with a professional air before it swung back at the ready.

Ahsoka knew it was no use to argue, or even to run. Instead she began to sob very softly. The red lightsaber paused as she closed her eyes, and although he could have continued to be silent, he finally spoke. Just barely, she could tell that with the mechanical reverb and the new deep growl, there was still her Master's voice in there, somewhere.

"Your mistake," he rumbled, voice as final and solemn as thunder on the horizon, "was including Padme."

Her eyes opened halfway, her mind frantic in final moments. Padme - not Senator, but Padme. She was busy with the realization when the blade arced back and then hit true. Ahsoka's head rolled off neatly, the ends of her headtails falling with fleshy slaps onto the stone; her body remained poised where she was sitting a few seconds more before finally losing her excellent, trained posture and slumping sideways.

She did not notice how he looked away when he killed her.

* * *

"It's the same old theme since nineteen-sixteen  
In your head, in your head,  
they're still fighting,  
With their tanks  
and their bombs,  
And their bombs  
and their guns,  
In your head, in your head,  
they are dying...

In your head, in your head  
Zombie, zombie, zombie  
What's in your head, in your head?"

- Zombie, The Cranberries


End file.
